


we must have died alone, a long long time ago

by dorky (dorcas_gustine)



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-13
Updated: 2011-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 09:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorcas_gustine/pseuds/dorky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>(We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when/Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend//Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes/I thought you died alone, a long long time ago)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	we must have died alone, a long long time ago

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of my oldest LoM fics, which I had forgottent to upload here. Enjoy!
> 
>  **WARNINGS:** Major character death, suicidal themes.
> 
> Many thanks to [](http://tigertrapped.livejournal.com/profile)[**tigertrapped**](http://tigertrapped.livejournal.com/) for being the fastest beta around!
> 
> Title and summary are from David Bowie's _The Man Who Sold The World_ , because when a theme works perfectly, why change it?

The music is loud in his ears, so loud that it prevents the screams of the people around him from reaching him. Squeezing shut his eyes and thinking of home Sam steps in the path of the oncoming train.

There’s a man on the platform, frozen in horror and recognition.

He knows there won’t be nothing left of Sam.

 

* * *

 

Gene’s loved once.

He’s married her.

Gene’s loved twice.

He’s lost him.

 

* * *

 

 _Swish. Click. Beep, beep._

 _Swish. Click. Beep, beep._

 _“You can let go now, Sam.”_

Sam’s eyes fly open in the darkness.

 _“Let go, Sam. If you let go, you’ll never wake up. Everything will be alright.”_

Sam bolts up in the bed, “No!” he screams to his lonely walls, “Don’t let go! I want to wake up! I want Maya! I wanna see my mom! I want my iPod, I want my mobile! I want civilization!”

Sam pushes his palms against his ears to drown every sound, he doesn’t want to listen, he wants to go _home_!

 _“Let go please, Sammy-boy.”_

He knows that voice, but it doesn’t belong to 2006.

 

* * *

 

His mother’s with him, Maya isn’t.

She hasn’t said, but Sam thinks it’s everything to do with the fact that he’s swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills while staring at grainy old photo of a copper killed in the seventies during a robbery. A man he shouldn’t even know.

“Why did you do it?” his mother asks, her eyes dry, but tears in her voice, and Sam should feel more guilty.

“I couldn’t cope,” he says, because lying is easier.

His doctor speaks of counselling, his mother is beside him, silent and supporting.

He doesn’t really listen, though, he wonders where that photo’s ended up, it’s the only thing he has.

Maybe he hasn’t lied at all.

 

* * *

 

“A word, Guv.”

Gene groans, because he knows that tone of voice, and he’s seen that particular expression on Sam’s face so many times he can predict exactly which eye is gonna twitch first. Jaw tense, forehead frowning, lips pressed in a thin line, Sam’s ‘I’m gonna be the most annoying git ever’ face looks like everyone else’s ‘I’ve got a bloody migraine’ face.

Gene puffs at his fag and doesn’t move, because he hasn’t kicked anyone yet this week and it’s Wednesday already.

“Guv,” Sam repeats, more urgently.

“They were just a few slaps and the bleedin’ twat had it coming anyway,” not that he has to justify himself, “So don’t you bloody annoy me with rules and procedures and whatsit.”

Sam opens his mouth, probably to start flapping about something or other, but Gene beats him to it, flicking away the fag and pointing at him, “And don’t try that little game again, Gladys, y’hear me? Because two can play that game.”

Sam’s a bloody poofter sometimes, but only birds do to that kind of blackmail.

Sam frowns, “I have no idea-” then his face clears and shakes his head, “No, this has got nothing to do with that. And we agreed we’d speak no more of that.”

Yeah, because Sam just could never admit he’s wrong. Gene goes on, “Because if you refuse to shag just to prove a point, there won’t be blowjobs in your future, sweetheart.”

Sam chokes and maybe blushes a little, then he laughs, but it’s humourless and nervous.

“ _Gene_ ,” he says, looking straight into his eyes, and suddenly Gene knows this is something really serious.

He watches silently as Sam seems to close around himself, arms around his body, as if to shield himself from an attack.

“I come from the future,” Sam says, “I’m in a coma. In 2006.”

Gene just stands there, arms crossed over his chest, silently listening.

“I don’t know why,” Sam says, “Maybe I’m mad.”

Gene doesn’t move.

“Help me,” Sam says.

 

* * *

 

Gene’s loved once.

He’s married her.

Gene’s loved twice.

He’s had him.

 

* * *

 

Sam’s in Gene’s office, “I’m back,” he says.

His Guv blinks at him, then at the half-empty bottle of Scotch he’s clutching in his hand.

“I’m real,” Sam says, but he doesn’t know if he’s telling the truth.

Gene makes a strange sound and reaches for him and kisses him, Scotch and cigarettes, kisses him, kisses him.

“I wasn’t there with you,” Sam shakily says, but now he knows he will be, Gene won’t die alone.

Sam breathes into his Guv’s neck and smells Gene Hunt and 1974, and at the same time it’s both coming home after an endless journey and having never left at all.

“Are you going to stay this time?”

 _“We had to pump his stomach and intubate him, but he’s stable for now.”_

 _“Oh, Sam.”_

Sam says nothing, he knows he’d be lying otherwise.

 

* * *

 

The bed is barely enough for one and the two of them are squeezed together and still on the verge of falling down. It’s no hardship, though.

Gene is warm, hot against his back and his breaths are slow and deep, but he knows he’s not sleeping. Sam’s mostly sure that neither of them really knows what the hell they’re doing or where this is going – _if_ it’s going somewhere at all.

“Thinkin’ too loudly, keepin’ me awake,” a voice puffs next to his ear, low and deep, a shiver runs up Sam’s spine and he scoots back a little bit more. There’s a soft, dry pressure on his shoulder, a whisper that could be a kiss, were his Guv a romantic man.

Sam supposes he’ll probably regret this, come morning, because in the daylight, with everything so sharp and defined, he’ll feel out of place and out of time once again, and Gene will probably say something offensive or do something stupid.

But right now, with Gene quietly breathing against his neck and his arms around him – a position that comes more from necessity than romance – Sam is at peace and can almost believe the illusion that everything’s alright.

Sam doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing or where this is going, but he knows what he wants right now, what he has to say, “I don’t want to wake up,” he breathes, and even his whisper feels too loud in the silent room.

“You’re not asleep.”

“When you’ll meet me, don’t let me wake up.”

Sam ignores Gene’s remarks about bloody insane DIs, he knows his Guv will do it.

 

* * *

 

Gene died in 1974 and Sam can’t wrap his mind around it, Gene’s still fresh in his memories, he’s scowling and smoking and rude as ever. And Sam can’t think that he’ll die, that he _has died_ , more than thirty years ago, pursuing some robbers, he can’t picture that Gene’s been shot, that his Guv’s died coughing blood and Sam can’t imagine that he won’t be there, _wasn’t_ there to protect him.

But Sam’s failed, he’s let down his Guv, he remembers two sets of hands pressing down on his own belly, he remembers the blood flowing through his fingers and pooling into his mouth. He remembers closing his eyes to the sight of Gene and reopening them to white, modern walls.

 

* * *

 

Sam dies in 1973, but before that, he’s lived in the future.

 

* * *

 

Gene sees him in front of the lift and even if Sam’s wearing a suit, he recognizes him on sight, but it feels strange to be so old when Sam is still as young as he remembers him.

“Tyler!” he bellows, because the doors have just opened and Sam is about to get in.

Sam stops and turns around, confusion all over his features, obviously not recognizing him.

It’s 2004, after all.

He reaches Sam and grabs his arm in a crushing grip, ‘Colin Raimes’ not the killer, you’ll be looking for in two years,’ he means to say, ‘It’s Edward Kramer. You’ll be just one house off.’

He just has to say that and Sam will be alright, he’ll never get knocked down by a car, he’ll never be in a coma.

He’ll never be in 1973.

Sam darts a glance at his hand on his arm, then frowns at him, his face is pinched and Gene _knows_ his eye is about to twitch in annoyance, and that knowledge leaves him breathless and takes him thirty years into the past.

Sam is _here_ , and Gene knows what he has to do, he’s come here, fighting down his demons, for a reason.

“Sir?” Sam says, and his voice is tight, but Gene knows he won’t hit an old man.

Gene clears his throat, smoothes down Sam’s sleeve, then points at him, “This um...shirt-tie's a nice combination. Uh, well done.”

Sam just looks at him, then awkwardly takes a step back, mumbles something that sounds like ‘good day’ under his breath and leaves, presumably to look for lifts with no old nutters included.

Gene knows he should have been stronger, he’s prepared himself thirty years for this conversation, he thought he’d be stronger.

He just never took into account what seeing Sam again would provoke.

 

* * *

 

Gene’s loved once.

He’s married her.

Gene’s loved twice.

He’ll have him.

 

* * *

 

Gene sees everything, but he’s too far away and can’t really do anything.

Sam crumples down quietly, humbly, and Mills runs away. Gene would think it’s one of Sam’s fits, one of those he sometimes has – headaches, hearing voices – weren’t it for the fact that he’s seen Mills’ knife and the red stain spreading under Sam’s hands.

When Gene reaches him, he’s already too far away.

“This is stupid,” Sam bubbles, “This is meaningless.”

Gene almost says, that’s life for you, mate, except it’s not life at all right now, it’s _death_ and he knows it, and Sam knows it, but he stays silent. He just presses down on Sam’s hands pressing on his flesh, on his life, and wishes Sam’s bewildered look of betrayal didn’t hurt so much.

“I don’t want to go,” Sam says, faintly.

“I don’t want you to,” Gene replies, even if it doesn’t matter at all.

Sam closes his eyes.


End file.
